


Maria's Adventures: Dark Tech

by CrossingTheFourthWall



Series: Maria's Adventures [19]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Tying Up Some Loose Ends, a character seems to come back from the dead but really doesn't, mind control tech, wrapping up a rather drawn-out series of stories on one world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-18 13:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13101087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrossingTheFourthWall/pseuds/CrossingTheFourthWall
Summary: Now in the New World, the Straw Hats find a seemingly uninhabited island to spend the night before they keep going on their adventure. However, there is something on this island that has more sinister ideas than exploring the island and sleeping soundly.Airam is here. And Maria intends to make this meeting a final confrontation. How things will go from here, only this encounter will tell.





	1. A Trap Sprung

**Author's Note:**

> This is the final arc in the One Piece world for now. It's short, and honestly, it's likely because I've been starting to loose interest in this fandom when it comes to writing. I could send Maria back after a while, but I don't know how things are going to go for me.

**Chapter 163 (or 1) – A Trap Sprung**

**Maria’s POV**

Hi, didn’t expect to have any company.

I’m Fire Storm Maria, so-called “Magician” of the Straw Hat crew. Over two years ago, I joined the crew at Water 7. Now, we’re all the way in the New World.

And I’m not the person who I was when I joined. I had amnesia back then, so I didn’t know who I was. I do now, though.

And my presence may be throwing things out of whack here on the Grand Line.

I’m…not supposed to be a part of the crew, you see. I’m here on the Grand Line for a different reason.

A _multiversal_ sort of reason.

There’s a crazy counterpart of mine running around and I have to find her before she does who knows what to this dimension trying to off _me._ It’s a part of being a World Jumper – that’s my job, stopping crazy people from doing crazy things to dimensions. I’ve got a bit of a track record of it.

And I was actually able to find her not too long after we got out from under the sea, having left Fishman Island behind and entered the New World.

We had managed to get out of the storm we’d popped up in without taking any damage, and the calm almost felt…surreal, after having been under the water for a while.

Still, it was nice to be under clear skies again, and a _sunset_ no less! It had been day when we’d left for Fishman Island – disappearing underwater for even a little hadn’t made time stop, that’s for sure.

I was tending to my Berry plants when I heard Luffy’s yell from the figurehead.

“Land! Our first island in the New World!”

My head shot up from where I’d been looking over an Oran Berry that I’d just plucked off its tree. In the distance, backlit by the setting sun, was an island. It looked like a pretty sizeable one, with the fuzzy outline that trees usually gave places.

All in all, though, it looked…strangely normal, for an island on the Grand Line. I was expecting something that had something weird about it.

Maybe the fact that it looked normal _was_ how it made itself weird among the other islands out here. At least, that’s what I’d thought at the time – now, looking back on it, I know that there had been something else entirely off about the place.

“Let’s pull up to the island and stay for the night,” Nami directed as I moved towards the main deck. I spotted her standing near the stairs that led up to the helm at the front of the ship. “Since the Log Pose can set in half a day, we can be gone by morning and head to the next island.”

Luffy bounded over and peered at the Log Pose on Nami’s wrist before frowning disapprovingly. “Hey, there’s nothing happening on this island! No fair!”

Oh, yeah. New Log Pose meant new ways of telling if any islands in our path had dangerous things or not.

I let out a sigh of relief as I reached the main part of the deck. “I’d consider that to be a good thing, Luffy. It’ll let us have a breather before we get into any big adventures out here in the New World, right?”

The captain of our ship turned and looked at me with a pouting expression as our navigator shot me a look that was half-relieved, half-annoyed. “Oh, come on, Maria! Don’t you want to do something fun?”

“Honestly, after everything that happened on Fishman Island and getting up here, I just want to sleep,” I replied flatly. “So maybe an island like this one will be quiet enough that we won’t have to worry about anyone chomping our heads off or something.”

“Where’s the fun in that?!” Luffy pouted.

Nami smacked him upside the head. “There can be a lot of fun things we can do when there isn’t anyone trying to kill us!”

“Nami is right, Luffy!” Usopp piped up. “Come on – that island doesn’t look like Little Garden – it looks a lot more like some of the islands back home in the East Blue! I bet some exploring will be just as fun as anything else!”

The long-nosed sniper sounded cheerily hopeful, but I thought I could see his knees wanting to knock together.

As much as he said exploring might be fun, it looked like he was nervous about what waited on the island, too.

Nami sighed irritably as the rest of us on deck looked over in her direction. “It’s going to be a bit too dark for that when we reach the island; if you guys want to explore it, it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow morning. Or we could just skip the whole thing and go to the next island by then, since the Log Pose will be—“

“I wanna explore!” Luffy burst out.

“Seems you managed to get through to him,” I commented to Usopp, who sighed in relief.

It didn’t take us too long to find a cove in the island’s cost we could hide _Sunny_ in. Hopefully there weren’t going to be any Marines nearby that might end up doing the same and spotting us in the middle of the night.

Zoro elected to take first watch – because of course he would. He was probably planning on doing at least a little training on deck while keeping an eye out for anyone who might want to sneak onto the ship while he was patrolling.

After having lived through what we had in the last couple of days down at Fishman Island, I was looking forward to getting some proper sleep for once in my life.

Unfortunately…some things weren’t exactly meant to be at this early stage of the New World.

**Change in POV**

The setup was perfect.

Not only had the Straw Hats wandered into the hidden cove of the artificial island without needing the Marines to herd them in, but they’d _also_ anchored, completely unaware of what was hiding in the island’s interior.

All they needed to do now was lure them out into the open and catch them unawares.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” one of the scientists looked at the other, turning his attention away from the monitors and the form of the Pirate Hunter moving fluidly on the pirate ship’s deck, practicing sword forms.

“Dr. Vegapunk is,” the other pointed out. “And this is really our only shot at figuring out whether we can use his new invention or not. We have to draw them out without making them aggressive.” He looked over at the others. “Are we prepared?”

There were a number of nods in response.

“Excellent. Begin!”

**Change in POV**

If any ships passed by that island in the night, they were quickly driven away by a cacophonous sound that didn’t sound the least bit harmonious.

To _most_ people, at least.

Nine figures emerged from a ship in the cove, then walked off the ship and wandered in different directions, not seeming to notice that they were splitting up from their fellows.

Another figure perched in a tree nearby cackled loudly, also going unnoticed by the figures below. “Zihihihihihi!”

Meanwhile, another perched in a tree further off watched with a far more grim expression.

“I’ve got to do something about this, before this world falls apart, too.” He pulled down the black cowboy hat over his eyes, then smirked. “Sorry, Lu. Guess things aren’t exactly going to be easy, huh?”

Meanwhile, a _tenth_ figure on the ship remained where she was in bed.

But she didn’t remain there for long.


	2. Back From The Dead?

Maria’s eyes snapped open as a chill ran down her spine, accompanied by an innate sense that something was happening that wasn’t supposed to.

She sat up in bed and pulled the covers off, looking around quickly.

Robin’s and Nami’s beds were both empty, sheets undone.

Maria frowned. “Those two usually make their beds in the morning….” She stepped out of bed, leaving her own sheets unstraightened as she moved past Nami’s and Robin’s beds and out onto the deck. “Nami? Robin? Is something—“

She cut herself off, looked around the main deck quickly. There was an uneasy quiet in the air. _Too_ much quiet, in fact.

Maria remained standing where she was for only a second. Then she moved from one end of the ship to the other, red boots that had taken the place of her sneakers creating a hollow metal echo against the wooden parts of the open deck.

She even poked her head into the boys’ cabin.

Empty. The entire ship was devoid of life – except for her.

Maria backed out of the boys’ cabin and moved onto the main deck. She started pacing in circles around the mast. “Something’s wrong here. Everyone’s left without waking up and telling me, and it doesn’t look like there was a struggle anywhere.” She shivered, feeling a chill despite the fact that there wasn’t a breeze. She zipped up her orange jacket, hiding her red shirt from view, and stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “What made them all leave at once? And without waking up and telling _me_ to take over the watch no less!”

She paused, then looked over at the island, frowning. “Hm.” She looked up at the flag for a moment, considering how it lay there limply. “Well, I don’t think the ship’s gonna be going anywhere for a while…and I’m too worried about the crew to stay put and just wait for them to come back.”

Maria’s train of thought only seemed to make the island feel more ominous. No longer a seemingly-quiet place for them to get a breather after the chaos of Fishman Island, it was something else entirely.

Maria vaulted over the side of the ship and landed on the shore in a crouch, sending up a cloud of dust and sand that was larger than was probably expected of someone her size.

“All right.” Maria rose to her feet, clapping the sand and dirt off her hands. “Let’s see what it is that this that this island’s hiding that made my crewmates disappear.”

With that, Maria promptly strode into the woods, looking down at the tamped grass that marked where others had walked into the trees.

It didn’t take her long to find the clearing where they’d all split, early on in the woods. The footprints disappeared into taller grass, more darkly-shaded areas of the forest.

“I don’t see anything that could have caused them to split,” Maria muttered, frowning. “No sign of a struggle or of anyone else who might be around here – or…hm. Something else must’ve happened that made everyone split up, but what? Did something pass overhead? Did something crash – no, no, couldn’t have been that; a noise like that would have woken me up.”

Maria looked up at the dark night sky; not a cloud could be seen covering the stars above, so there wasn’t any indication there that the other Straw Hats saw something distressing to them. “Something must’ve…lured them out in different directions somehow, but why not me? I’m clearly missing something here.”

“So am I.”

Maria felt a chill run down her spine at those three words. _That voice…how?! I thought—_

She turned sharply to see who was standing behind her in order to confirm what it was that she was thinking. As soon as she caught sight of the figure standing behind her, she took a step back, shaking her head slowly as the color drained from her face. “No…no way…that – how? I _saw_ you die! How is it that you’re _here?!_ ” She looked around quickly. “Did we end up on an island that connects to the land of the dead?!”

The figure blinked in confusion at Maria’s response. “I’m…what?” He snorted, but the sound was an uneasy one. “You’re kidding, right? I’m not something that can be wiped off the face of the earth that easily. You must’ve seen someone who looked like me, not—“

“Portgas D. Ace,” Maria cut him off. “I _saw_ you _die_ at Marineford in Luffy’s arms – what are you doing _here?_ _How_ are you standing here? Are you a ghost of him? Someone’s play at a joke? Or—“

She cut herself off, paused, and her eyes widened sharply.

“…Or are you a counterpart of the one I saw die?”

The muscular, bare-chested young man standing in front of her blinked, mouth slightly open in an expression of confusion and shock. He frowned at Maria’s question and tilted his head slightly, looking her over. Any sign of even a slightly relaxed demeanor was gone. “How would you know something about that?”

His voice was curious, but he looked cautious as well. There was a slight stiffness in his shoulders; he appeared at least a little ready to move.

Maria frowned at the question, looking the other Ace over a little more closely. He wore the same shorts that his counterpart had, but the Ace at Marineford had been wearing slippers instead of sneakers. The tattoo on his arm was the same – ASCE with the “S” crossed out – and the hat he was wearing was a black cowboy hat with smiling and frowning beads resting on the rim.

Black, not _orange,_ like the hat Maria remembered seeing in the vision she’d had after leaving Water 7.

There was another difference, too – on Ace’s chest rested the _exact same X-shaped scar_ that Luffy had on his.

Maria relaxed her stance slightly and raised her hands, showing him that she wasn’t about to attack. “My name is Maria Carlsdale. I’m a World Jumper. I’m guessing you are, too, because there’s no way that two Aces can exist in the same dimension.”

The Ace lookalike blinked at Maria’s statement, his expression still remaining guarded. “You…what?” He snorted and shook his head. “No, no, Luffy doesn’t have enough _luck_ to be able to run into someone like you.”

Maria blinked. “You…you’ve heard of me?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“…pretty much all of the dimensions that I’ve never entered into before – how did _you_ come to know about me? The Marines here know that World Jumpers _exist,_ but they definitely don’t know me by my name or my actions.” Maria frowned, confused. “And I don’t think that I’ve interacted with you before, that’s for sure.”

Ace’s counterpart shook his head. “We haven’t met before now. I heard about you because of that big event that happened a long time ago – when my world was destroyed and everything else got reset without it.”

“Rese –“ Maria stiffened sharply, her demeanor quickly changing from curious and cautious to colder, more calloused. “Your world was a part of the World Collision. I never realized.”

“Must’ve done a good job keeping it under wraps then, even from you, since you were their right hand for a while.”

Maria’s eyes narrowed, but the look on her face wasn’t anger; it was more as though she had been struck and wasn’t about to strike back. “What are you doing here? If your dimension was destroyed--”

“Honestly? I have no idea.” Ace’s counterpart shrugged. “I’ve been mostly traveling, trying to stay out of the limelight as much as possible. I’ve been moving between places, trying to find places where I can help. I didn’t think that I’d…I’d end up here.” His expression softened slightly, and he moved his gaze away from Maria and towards the trees that surrounded them, the night sky above their heads. “I haven’t heard anything from the news lately, so I don’t know what’s happened, so it was a bit of a surprise to see Luffy in the New World.” He chuckled fondly, then looked at Maria and frowned. “But you said I’m dead in this dimension?”

Maria nodded slowly. “Yes, you are. You were captured by Blackbeard after we rescued Robin from Enies Lobby; you were taken to Marineford to be executed and Luffy and I managed to get there in order to do something about it. There were…certain events that I was unable to stop, and by the time that we had rescued you and were on our way out, Akainu threatened Whitebeard’s name, started to punch Luffy and – and you moved in his way and took the punch and—“

Maria cut herself off, put a hand to her mouth and shook her head, looking away from Ace’s counterpart.

“Luffy was devastated,” Maria murmured quietly.

“…I see. So that’s what would have happened if those Dark Arms hadn’t gotten involved.”

Maria turned her head sharply at Ace’s statement, gaze becoming sharp and hard. “Those mind-controlling monsters did _what?!”_

 _Luffy_ dying at Marineford was one thing. A group of aliens that Maria had encountered only once before because they’d kidnapped her and nearly caused a large portion of the multiverse to collapse in on itself was another matter entirely. Maria could picture those large, semi-humanoid demonic black-and-red monsters invading Marineford and killing pirates and Marines alike while Airam cackled somewhere above them.

Ace’s counterpart nodded grimly. “Yeah. They were brought in by Blackbeard because he made some kind of deal with them, and it backfired on him because they killed him and started having Myra – who’d disappeared from the Purple Pirates’ crew some months ago – do something that tore the world apart and caused Akainu to land a hit on Luffy in the process.”

“You knew Myra before she was taken and transformed, then.”

“Hard not to. They were allies of ours in the first half of the Grand Line – how that happened, Pops never told me. I never had a chance to find out why, either.”

“…I see.” Maria considered that, frowning as she tapped her chin in thought. She looked at Ace. “You still haven’t told me specifically why you’re here in this dimension. You say you’ve been going around and helping others – what drew you here?”

“What drew me?” He frowned. “I don’t really know. When I saw Luffy and his crew leaving the ship and wandering into the woods to the sound of that awful noise—“

“Awful noise?” Maria blinked. “I didn’t hear anything while I slept. I only woke up after they’d disappeared….” She trailed off, frowning, considering Ace’s words. “What sort of noise was it?”

“It sounded like a bunch of bands playing together at the same time, but playing different songs,” Ace replied. “It sounded like they might’ve been tone-deaf, too, but that’s—“

“ _Themes,”_ Maria hissed. “Primus damnit, of _course_ someone found out about _themes_ in this dimension! As if Vegapunk only wanting me alive to figure out how I ticked was bad enough – now they had to go and find the _music_ that they were in tune with for a scrapping _trap_!”

Ace stared at Maria with an uncertain expression as she shook her fist at the sky with an angered expression. “You’ve lost me.”

Maria growled and ran a hand down her face. “I think we both need to go over our stories properly – later. Someone must have set a trap on the island and lured the other members of the Straw Hats into them. But what _kind_ of trap it is is something that I don’t know. But I intend to find out what’s going on and why it is that all this is making me feel so uneasy. _After_ we have that settled, we can go over stories and see if there’s anything I can do to help _you._ You dimension was involved in the mess that _I_ played a large part in, and it wasn’t returned to its normal state or reset like the others. Knowing why would be a very good idea.”

**Maria’s POV**

I could _not_ believe what was happening.

Firstly, I wasn’t expecting to meet a counterpart of Ace’s from another dimension – an alternate reality of the one I was in, where events happened a little differently.

Secondly, I wasn’t expecting that he was involved in a series of events that I and others involved in it had come to call the “World Collision.” More on that later.

And thirdly, I wasn’t expecting that someone had set a _damn trap_ on the island for the Straw Hats – and only got those of us who were _supposed_ to be on the crew at this point, which meant _not_ the World Jumping Reploid who was capable of breaking time and space in order to get to different places.

Yeah, that’s a thing I do. And am.

And as a result of the fact that I’m a dimension-traveling android who is _not_ technically a native to the Grand Line or _any_ of the Four Blue Seas – or the White Sea of the clouds up above the ground – whoever had set this trap had obviously not prepared accordingly for me.

Meaning they didn’t have anything to _bait_ me to walk blindly into a trap.

“I’ve got an advantage here,” I spoke aloud. “Either they don’t know about me or they don’t know my weaknesses, whoever is doing this. I can—“

And then I was cut off by a familiar voice that didn’t _sound_ like it should have.

“You are the one they call Fire Storm, correct?”

I turned sharply at the sound of the voice and found myself glaring at Zoro. But there was something wrong – his eye was glazed over, his expression was slack and without emotion.

I moved in front of Ace a little. “That is what they call me, yes. Who are you?”

“That’s—“

“Dr. Vegapunk,” Zoro said in a monotone, cutting Ace off.

Ace spluttered something as my eyes narrowed.

Zoro wouldn’t answer to any name other than his – and whatever insults we came up for him when Sanji was looking for more cannon fodder for their rivalry.

That, coupled with the expression on his face….

“Using our swordsman as a mouthpiece without revealing yourself, very clever of you.” I wasn’t planning on letting down my guard for a moment. “What have you done with my crewmates, Pacifista man? How did you get your hands on the knowledge of the themes you’d need to lure them out? And _how_ are you doing what you are doing now?”

“My source wishes to remain anonymous,” Vegapunk replied through his Zoro mouthpiece. “However, there is something here for you and your friend.”

“Ace get out of here now,” I said as one of Zoro’s arms started to move. It looked like he was holding something, but in the dark of night it was hard to tell what. “Find the other Straw Hats and get them loose.”

“But—“

“GO!”

As soon as that word had left me, Zoro threw the item in his hand directly at my chest, much too quickly for me to be able to dodge it.

As soon as it collided with my chest and dug its little prongs in, I knew what it was and what it was going to attempt to do.

Sound dropped out of my ears; my vision wavered with static as _something_ tried to worm its way into the back of my mind, tried to tell me that I should give in, let someone else think for me, direct my actions, use me as he pleased.

And then something else rose up in my mind. _Frag that._

**3 rd POV**

Maria stiffened as soon as the black box attached to her chest, arms going limp at her sides as her eyes widened. The blue started to fade out into a white, then started to flicker.

“Invasive program detected,” Maria said aloud in a monotone. “Loss of free will, personality, and corruption of moral code imminent. Anti-defense measures engaged.”

Ace – who had retreated back to the edge of the clearing – stared in alarm at Maria as she rattled this off, her voice starting to slip into something that sounded more mechanical than human. Zoro, on the other hand, continued to stare blankly.

“Program identified,” Maria said. “MindTech detected. Purging immediately.”

The black box attached to her chest whined and started smoking immediately, then fell off her and into the grass, sounding like a dying computer that had overheated so much its circuits were melting together.

Maria blinked and shook her head as the blue color of her eyes came back into focus. She gained a snarling expression as she slammed a foot down on the black box, destroying it with a metallic _crunch_ as her clothes rippled, going from jeans, shirt, and jacket to a set of red, orange, and gray armor that covered her body from the neck down.

“I see now what you’re attempting,” Maria snarled. “And you won’t be able to follow through on your plans. MindTech is _dangerous_ and will only lead to your demise.”

Vegapunk said nothing for a moment, but Zoro’s eye _did_ move slightly, scanning Maria’s appearance. “Regardless of whether it is or not, the Marines are interested in this MindTech, as you call it.”

“To the Pit with them!” Maria bellowed back. “The multiverse has been reset once before because a group of giants decided they wanted to control multiple worlds at once. I do not want to see that happen again, or so help me Primus I will find you and wring your neck before you have the chance to!” She pointed a white-gloved hand at Zoro – but at Vegapunk – in an accusing manner. “I am not going to allow this technology to fall into their hands. You are taking the free will of pirates – _just as you took Kuma’s free will from him!”_

That particular exclamation fell over the clearing with a dark, dark aura. Ace, still standing at the edge of the clearing, couldn’t help but feel the chill that ran down his spine.

Maria wasn’t just mad. She was _incensed._

“If I have to destroy whatever facilities you are presently located in in order to get my point across, so be it,” Maria said flatly. “But I do _not_ condone the kinds of technologies that take away a being’s ability to choose their own destiny for themselves. I destroyed the citadel of the Dark Arms with a Continuum Shift; destroying your hidden labs will not take as much energy.”

“You are saying that as though you can find my labs,” Vegapunk replied.

“I can and I will and I will burn them and all your information contained within them to the ground.” Maria’s hands were covered in fire now – red-orange and sparking and making her look dangerously terrifying in the starlight. “The Dark Arms were an evil race intent on making multiple dimensions and the people within them their personal playthings. I don’t know where you managed to get your hands on the information you might have needed in order to _make_ MindTech, but I am going to make _sure_ that you _never_ are able to recover it!”

The glare that went from Maria didn’t seem to affect Zoro in the slightest, considering his slack expression.

“How did you gain an immunity to it?” Vegapunk asked finally.

Maria blinked, thrown off by the sudden question. The flames on her hands did not lessen, however. “It has been used against me before. My mind knows its touch and knows what to do in order to throw it off. I’ve been vaccinated.”

“…I see.” Vegapunk paused. “I cannot deactivate the ‘MindTech’ from my current location, nor do I have the data on-site in my labs. Mindless mechanical soldiers I can make from willing volunteers, but taking the will of others without their consent is another matter. If you want the MindTech deactivated, find the one who gave me the information on these devices in the first place. She is—“

“Airam,” Maria growled. “Of course it is. Is she on the island?”

“I believe so.”

The grin that crossed Maria’s face wasn’t a kind one, nor was it one that Ace wanted to be on the receiving end of. “Good. You’ve just made my job a _lot_ easier, Vegapunk. Watch from a distance – _not_ through Zoro. We’re going to need him.”

With that said, Maria raised her right arm as her hand disappeared inside of a cannon barrel. She leveled it at Zoro, and fired a sphere of yellow, sparking energy.

**Space rip**

The lab went nuts.

“Sir! We’ve lost connection with--“

_::I know. Leave it. We’re abandoning the project::_

The scientist at the Snail Phone looked confused. “Wh-what?”

 _::The project isn’t something that I want to invest my time and resources in. It will cause more of a balance upset than the War of the Best, and after_ that _fiasco I doubt the Marines want to have to contend with anything similar ever again. I’ve already destroyed the blueprints; don’t inform our client of my decision; I believe she will come to realize that on her own. Especially when she notices that she has lost control of one of the nine already::_

“S-sir?”

_::Pack your equipment and go. I do not wish to have any of you put in harm’s way when a World Jumper is on the warpath::_

Vegapunk hung up his end of the connection, and the lab staff went into an instant frenzy, grabbing what they needed – and only what they needed – and running for the exits as quickly as they could.

If there was a _World Jumper_ who didn’t like what Vegapunk was considering doing, then that meant the project _definitely_ was a flop.


	3. Start the Hunt

“What the hell was that?!” Ace demanded as Maria lowered her Buster.

“I thought I told you to get out of here,” Maria replied coldly. She strode over to where Zoro was lying on the forest floor, sparks of electricity quickly fading as she turned him over and plucked a smoking black box from the back of his neck.

“Like hell I was gonna wander out into the woods and end up running face-first into the Weather Witch or Black Leg!” Ace replied. “They might’ve been carrying more of those things too – what would you have done then?!”

“Same thing I did with Zoro,” Maria replied as she looked over at him. “Which we’re going to have to do with the others. I’m not about to let Airam get to have her way with them for long.”

“Sounds like you two have a bit of a history,” Ace noted.

“You could say that.”

Zoro groaned and slowly pushed himself up to a sitting position, rubbing his head and grimacing. “Ugh. That left a rotten taste in my mouth.” He looked at Maria with a disapproving expression. “About time you showed up. What the hell’s going on?”

“A phantom from my past that I’ve been meaning to find an opportunity to take care of for a long time,” Maria replied. She held out a hand and helped Zoro to his feet. “What happened?”

Zoro’s good eye narrowed. “Not sure. All of us heard music coming from somewhere. It gets fuzzy after that. Next thing I know I’m being used as a damn mouthpiece and got hit with a lightning bolt.” He gave Maria a pointed look, then noticed Ace standing behind her and moved his gaze to him. “And who the hell’s this guy?”

“Call me Hiken,” the other replied. “I’m…I know who I look like, but I’m not the guy you know.”

“You remember how I told you that I’m a World Jumper?” Maria asked. She plowed on when Zoro didn’t give a verbal answer. “Things like this – doubles of people you know appearing out of nowhere – happen sometimes. Hiken came from a dimension – a world – that no longer exists because of something a corrupted double of _me_ got involved in.”

“Who’s to say you’re not going to do the same thing?” Zoro replied.

“Because I’m not only immune to the technology, but I’ve also faced against them before and _won._ ” Maria took a moment to force herself to calm down, breathing slowly and forcing her shoulders to relax. “We have to find the others. Airam is somewhere on this island and has control over Luffy and the others, and we need to find her and snap them out of their funk before she takes this world-wide and starts doing to this world what she did to the last one. Do you want to go back to the ship or do you want a chance to knock some sense into them?”

“What do you think?” Zoro pushed on the hilt of one of his blades, exposing a portion of the sheathed metal. “No way in hell am I letting our crewmates run around like puppets. Airam’s yours?”

Maria nodded curtly. “I’ll explain everything I know about MindTech and the monsters who initially created it, as well as Hiken and Airam when all of this is over. I promise.”

“I’ll be holding you to that. I don’t know if Luffy will want to listen, though.” Zoro’s gaze moved over to Hiken. “Unless he catches sight of you.”

Hiken winced. “Yeah…Maria told me I’m technically dead.”

“Not just ‘technically.’” Zoro unsheathed one of his swords and pointed it at the X-shaped scar on Hiken’s chest. After a moment, he pulled back. “I’m not going to ask what happened to your Luffy. And Luffy probably won’t, either. But don’t set him off.”

Hiken nodded. “Of course not.”

“Good.” Zoro looked over at Maria. “We have nine more people to find. Let’s go.”

“Destroy the black boxes you’ll find on the backs of their necks,” Maria said. “It will bring them back to their senses.”

The swordsman eyed her critically, then disappeared into the trees without another word.

Maria and Hiken exchanged looks.

“So, partner or split up?” Hiken raised an eyebrow.

“Split,” Maria replied. “We can cover more ground this way. Be careful – our crew is strong.”

Hiken nodded. “If they’ve managed to get into the New World this time, they have to be.” He looked around for a moment, then pointed off in a direction. “I’m going this way. I’d say good luck, but you’re the one who beat the Dark Arms before. You probably don’t need it.”

As he strode off and disappeared, Maria watched his back for a moment before sighing and shaking her head.

“It wasn’t _just_ me,” she murmured. Then her expression hardened, and she strode off into the woods.

As soon as the clearing was empty, another figure dropped out of the sky and landed on quiet feet in the center of it. She had the same shape as Maria did – armor, head and all – but that was where any similarity ended. Her hair was black, with purple streaks forming as brown remained rather stubbornly at the tips; her eyes were purple, her armor was purple and white.

The expression on her face said that she was _not_ happy with this turn of events.

“Things were going so well before _she_ decided to show up,” Airam muttered to herself in frustration. “ _Why_ did I have to let her live?! Maria’s been nothing more than a plaything, but now she’s become more of a nuisance. More like she was when we last ran across each other. And I’m getting so close to being able to reenact _that_ and bring back the Masters…why does she always get in the way?!”

Something weak stirred at the back of her mind, tried to tell her something, but she pushed it back down and out of the way. It was a weak voice, her past self. Those memories were corrupted for a reason; she wasn’t going to be returning to that part of herself for any reason.

“Maria.” Airam gritted her teeth. “I’ll find you and put an end to this, once and for all. The Dark Arms will rise again, and _you_ will be the one to fall.”

**Maria’s POV**

I had meant it when I said I would explain things to the others _later._ The threat that Airam presented wasn’t one that I wanted to end up facing if we left her alone for too long.

I’ll explain it to you readers now so that you’re not completely left out of the loop.

As a World Jumper, I’m an interdimensional traveler who’s supposed to keep dimensions from getting taken over by the villain. Supposed to – I’m only one person; I don’t get _any_ backup to help me with whatever problems I end up running into, not counting the locals who live in the dimension I’m helping.

I’ve been doing this ever since I was 16. According to my home dimension, I’m more like 40 years old now, but I still look like a teenager because of…other things that happened. I’m not gonna say what yet.

Anyway, the problem that got me here, to _this_ place in particular, was Airam.

Airam’s a counterpart – a multiversal double – of me. She didn’t give me a name to call her, so I’ve taken to calling her by my name reversed. It worked well enough when I met her at first, but now I know that there’s more to the puzzle that makes up her past.

Especially considering that she was the one who pushed me into this dimension and caused me to get amnesia because I didn’t get the chance to properly form a portal.

Anyway, Airam was involved in an event some time ago called the World Collision. Basically, a group of aliens decided they wanted to rule more people in a bigger dimension and forced a number of dimensions together that weren’t supposed to merge.

And they used me and their mind-controlling technology to do it, but they _started_ with another dimension – another Grand Line dimension. And they started it with Airam.

I only know this because a captain-less crew of pirates kept an eye on me for the two years that I was away from the rest of the crew, training. They knew Airam before she was Airam, before she was the crazed counterpart of mine that had destroyed their dimension and dropped them in this one on an island out in the Calm Belt, away from all the action.

Airam was probably starting to get inklings of things, but she wasn’t going to be able to fully realize what it was she wasn’t sure about until I managed to meet up with her.

So that was my goal on the island: find her, stop her, and bring her to her senses before she destroyed this dimension, too.

_I wasn’t about to let people die and be used like puppets a second time. Scrap no._

That was my train of thought as I moved through the woods, looking for _something_ that hinted at Airam’s presence. A flash of purple, that crazed laugh of hers – _anything_ that could possibly hint at where she had been and where she was going.

She had to be still on the island, or at least somewhere nearby. MindTech needed a source signal to work from, and there wasn’t a tall tower nearby that could broadcast it over long distances.

I started hearing explosions from another area of the island, and Hiken yelling the nickname he’d chosen. They’d run into the other members of the Straw Hats already – that’s good; Airam wasn’t keeping them back.

But where was—

“There you are!”

I came skidding to a halt in another clearing as a familiar figure stepped out of the shadows – my double, dressed in purple and white. Her hair was different from what I remembered it being – instead of plain brown like mine, it had started to turn black, with streaks of purple starting to appear as well. It looked _really weird_ to have her hair like that, but it only confirmed the suspicions I’d been carrying, as well as what I had been told by the Purple Pirates over the course of the two years I spent training with them.

“Airam,” I growled.

**Change in POV**

Hiken was having a _really hard time_ not going nuts over the cyborg that he had found himself up against. This guy had _rockets_ in his shoulders, a metal nose, and he was shooting _laser beams_ from his hands!

How did Luffy get all the cool crewmembers?!

Hiken shook his head as he scrambled out of the way of another laser beam. “Okay, enough gawking. I’ve gotta bring you to your senses!” Fire quickly obscured his right hand from view, and he pulled it back before throwing his arm forward. “ _Hiken_!”

The explosion of flames definitely caught the cyborg by surprise, and as the flames overtook him while he paused, they hit _something_ at the back of his neck that caused him to cry out in pain and drop to his knees.

Hiken let the flames dissipate and quickly approached, moving around behind the cyborg and making sure that what he’d been aiming for had been taken out.

He paused when he saw the black, smoking, melted mess of metal fall off the back of the cyborg’s neck and land in the grass.

“Whew! That was too close.” Hiken wiped his brow. “I’ve got to learn how to not let the awesomeness get in the way of rescuing people. Kinda wish Maria had handled this guy instead of—“

A large mechanical hand shot out, catching Hiken and slamming him into a tree. He found himself staring at an angry glare on the cyborg’s face.

“Who the hell are you?” the cyborg demanded.

**Change in POV**

Of _course_ Zoro ran into that goddamned cook first. He’d been planning on making a beeline straight for Luffy, but then Luffy’s aura had moved and he’d found himself staring down that stupid cook and his stupid Armament Haki-infused legs.

If this kept up, Zoro’s swords were going to get worn down, even _with_ his own Haki strengthening them.

He growled around the hilt in his mouth and lunged at Sanji again. “Come on, you stupid cook! Now’s not the time!”

Yelling at Sanji would probably help to break him from that thing’s control. Probably.


	4. Taking Back the Crew

**Maria’s POV**

I started circling the clearing slowly, not taking my gaze off Airam as she started to do the same. She had her usual knowing sneer on her face, but it didn’t seem to be as haughty as it had been when I’d last seen her.

Then again, last time I’d seen her I’d been in the company of a group of pirates that she’d thought were dead, so that probably had done something.

I kept my thoughts of the Purple Pirates away from the Marineford Massacre and focused instead on the person moving in time with my steps in front of me.

“I was wondering if you’d ever show up in the New World,” Airam said casually. “It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it? Full of chaos and powers beyond the comprehension of most humans who—“

“Airam, this isn’t you.”

Airam blinked at me, then chuckled. Not a full-blown “Zihihihihi!” laugh like I’d been expecting. “Not me? What makes you say that? Clearly, you don’t remember _enough_ to be able to say that you—“

“Actually, _Myra,_ I think you’ll find that I’ve remembered more in the last two years than I did in the few months that I was with the Straw Hats before Marineford.”

Airam stopped. I did, too, but only to keep her in my line of sight. Her expression had gone blank as soon as I’d said the other name.

“Name not recognized,” Airam said in a monotone. She shook her head and refocused, smirking. “You claim you’ve remembered everything?”

“Considering that I _took_ your World Jumping abilities from you and used it to fuel the Continuum Shift, yes,” I replied flatly.

Airam stiffened. Her smirk, which had already been wavering, went flat. “So you do remember.” The crazed grin came back in full force. “Which means you can have the full knowledge that I _destroyed_ you tonight! The MindTech may not work on you, but the masters—“

“Aren’t going to be able to do anything because of the Continuum Shift,” I replied.

“Are you so sure? You simply reset the universe – you didn’t do anything else! You haven’t completely stopped them from doing something like this again! Who’s to say they aren’t planning on taking over this dimension and starting all over?!”

“You.”

Airam’s grin faltered. “What?”

I wasn’t thinking when I was just plowing through these answers, I can tell you that much. Because of what Vegapunk had done with Zoro minutes ago those particular memories of that particular time were still fresh on my mind, and I wasn’t intending to just let them haunt the back of my mind.

“I took your World Jumping abilities,” I said, repeating what I’d said before. “The Multiverse _knew_ you were abusing them and _knew_ what to do about it as a result. The Dark Arms need someone who can mess with time and space the way a World Jumper only can, and they’re not gunning after me because I threw them off before, and they’re not gunning after you because I _made you useless to them.”_

I was only goading her at this point.

And guess what? It worked.

**Change in POV**

Chopper whimpered as he came to, covered in burns and held tightly in a hug of mechanical arms. “Th-that was scary!” He buried his face in Franky’s bare chest, wailing.

“It was definitely unnerving,” Franky agreed. He looked over at Hiken. “How’d you know about those things, anyway? I haven’t seen or heard of tech like this before.”

“It’s something that I’ve run into before,” Hiken replied. He scanned the dark forest clearing they were standing in. “But I didn’t have to face its creators head-on like Flare-Up did.”

“Flare-Up?”

“Ah – Maria. She’s better known as Flare-Up out there.” Hiken motioned at the sky vaguely. “Although, that Fire Storm nickname might fit her a little bit better. She went after the guys who made that stuff and destroyed my world along with a bunch of others, so she knows her way around these things really well.”

“Maria told us only recently that she was…wasn’t from our world.” Chopper sniffled, getting his act together. “S-so, there can be people from out there who look like people we know, too?”

“Yup. An infinite number – or so I’ve been told.” Hiken shrugged sheepishly as Chopper stared at him with wide eyes. “This is the first time I’ve run into you guys again after leaving home.”

“Wow…”

“So, how’re they doing?” Franky asked. “Our other selves, I mean.”

Hiken’s expression became more grim. He turned to look away from the two of them while they looked at him with a concerned expression.

“I…I haven’t seen them since the World Collision. I don’t know if they got out before everything went to hell or not.” Hiken sighed and ran a hand over his face. “I know one of them definitely didn’t, though.”

The tone in his voice caused Franky’s eyes to widen sharply.

“Why do you—“

An explosion went off somewhere else on the island; the dark night was suddenly lit up with something the color of orange and purple flames.

Hiken turned sharply, facing another part of the island as purple and orange flames climbed higher and higher, above the trees and blotting out the stars momentarily with the strength of their light.

“Looks like Flare-Up’s found Airam,” Hiken commented. “Let’s find the others before she tried to use them against her as hostages!”

“Right!” Franky rose to his feet, still holding onto Chopper with one metal hand. “Lead the way, bro! We’ve got crewmates to find!”

“I’ll help, too!” Chopper added. He hopped out of Franky’s hand and shifted to Heavy Point, appearing more human but not quite having that appearance. “We’ve got to find the others, before it’s too late!”

“Zoro’s working with us, so we still have the rest of your crew to rescue,” Hiken said.

“That’s six more people at least!” Franky pointed out. “And super powerful ones, too!”

“Then we’d better move before Airam uses them!” Hiken started running back into the trees, Franky and Chopper following after him. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to see this world end again!”

Franky and Chopper exchanged looks at Hiken’s exclamation. Franky raised an eyebrow, but Chopper looked worried.

“Again?” Chopper asked.

Hiken didn’t answer. And that only seemed to make Chopper even more worried.

“Franky, I think I know what happened to our other selves,” Chopper said worriedly.

“Yeah,” Franky muttered. “Let’s make sure that it doesn’t happen again, huh? I don’t think Captain would like it too much.”

Chopper looked at Franky with a concerned expression, then nodded and looked back at Hiken ahead of them with a more determined look. “Right!”

Hiken ignored the two of them as they talked behind him as he continued to move forward. His mind was going elsewhere – back to memories that he’d left behind some time ago, when he’d left his own world far behind.

He could still see that straw hat lying in the center of what used to be Marineford, without its owner nearby to pick it up and leap into the fray to beat back whatever stood in his way. Blood flecks sat on the red ribbon, almost unseen.

Almost.

**Change in POV**

Zoro pried the black box off the back of Sanji’s neck with a flick of the tip of a blade, cutting the device in two in the process.

Sanji groaned and pushed himself up from where he’d collapsed on the ground, rubbing the back of his neck. “What the hell was that?”

“Welcome back to the land of the sane,” Zoro said dryly. “As sane as you’re gonna get anyway.”

Sanji looked at him sharply, eyes narrowing. “What was that?” He blinked when he saw the look on Zoro’s face: brow furrowed, eye narrow.

He wasn’t looking for their usual rival-fight. Zoro was looking for something else.

Sanji pushed himself up to his feet, still rubbing at the back of his neck like something had been there that hadn’t felt right seconds ago. “What’s going on?”

“Some moron’s pulling a mind control trick with tech,” Zoro replied. “Maria knows what it is and is going after some evil twin double of her who’s trying to use them for something. Not sure what.”

“She’s facing her double _alone?”_ Sanji frowned. “You should’ve stayed with her and—“

An explosion of purple and orange flames shot up from another part of the forest-covered island, blending together in some horrid color combination that lit the rest of the island in an eerie glow.

“I think she’s got it handled.” Zoro turned his gaze away from the column of flames as it faded. “We’ve got to find the others and knock them loose of whatever it is that we got stuck with when we were stupidly lured out here.”

Sanji frowned. “Any idea where that music was coming from? It…almost felt like it was calling to my very soul for some reason.”

Zoro snorted. “If Usopp was here, he’d probably say sirens.”

Sanji snorted in agreement. “Hell yeah he would. I wouldn’t be surprised if he says that as soon as we get him loose.” He looked around. “So, we’ve got to rescue the others then, right? I’ll take care of Nami-san and Robin-chan. You can handle the rest.” He started to run out of the clearing.

Zoro moved in front of him. “Wait. There’s something else.”

Sanji stopped shot and pulled back, eyebrow twitching in annoyance. “Make it quick, moss head, we don’t have time.”

“We’re getting help from another double. Not of one of us – someone else Luffy knows.”

“Okay, how do you know he’s a double?”

“Because he’s supposed to be _dead.”_

Sanji blinked. “Someone Luffy knows who’s supposed to be dead? It’s not his mom, is it? His grandma?”

Zoro raised a hand, looking ready to smack Sanji upside the head, then lowered it as he gritted his teeth. “It’s Ace, you idiot.”

Sanji blinked in surprise. “Ace…? But how’d he get here if he’s supposed to be—“

“We’ll have to ask him that when we’re done here. Maria, too – they have a lot to answer for.”

Sanji didn’t look like he wanted to get Maria stuck in a question-and-answer session, but Zoro was – furiously – right. There were a lot of holes in her story about being able to travel to different worlds that they hadn’t had a chance to fill in yet, and whatever it was, they were going to have to get those answers _soon._

“So this Other-Not-Ace is running around helping us, too?” Sanji asked.

“Yeah. He said to call him Hiken.”

“ ‘Fire Fist’? So he has that ability, too.”

“Yeah, and Luffy’s scar.”

Sanji’s eyes widened. “He – how?!”

“Obviously, something different happened to him.” Zoro looked over at Sanji grimly. “And I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out what it is that did happen.”

Sanji didn’t look like he liked the implications of that. “Luffy’s not gonna like that.”

“We don’t know _how_ Luffy’s going to react to this. _He_ was there _,_ not the rest of us. We’re going to have to play this by ear once Maria’s taken care of that double of hers and we’ve gotten everyone else back to normal.”

There came the sound of something snapping nearby, and a small, dark something rocketed down into the grass in front of them. Zoro and Sanji split in two different directions as a giant venus fly trap grew up from the ground suddenly, snarling like it was hungry.

Zoro flicked his sword at it, the slight movement cutting the plant’s head off. “Looks like we’ve got out next crewmate.”

“Yup.” Sanji pulled out a cigarette and lit it, tapping a foot against the ground. “All right, Usopp, where are you hiding?”


	5. Remember!

**Maria’s POV**

Airam was furious that I pointed out the Dark Arms wouldn’t have any more use for her even _if_ she was able to get their attention.

Which I doubted would even happen.

“I _reset_ that portion of the universe! People forgot as their timelines were rewritten!” I dodged a blast of purple flames from Airam as she roared in anger at me, trying to drown out my words with the sound of her own voice.  “I would _not_ be surprised if the Dark Arms were reset, too!”

“They don’t have a dimension to go back to because it was too small for them!” Airam roared back. “The Dark Arms weren’t affected, just as you and I were not!”

“I’m the World Jumper who set off the Continuum Shift, do you expect me to be affected by my own technique?” I called back. “And as for you, you were a World Jumper once!”

“So is your brother, and he still forgot!” Airam shot back.

I winced at the reminder of how I’d found Matthew.

World Jumpers have an ability that can come up as a last resort, depending on the events that happen in that particular universe. It’s called a “Continuum Shift,” and it completely resets that dimension’s timeline to keep certain events from being able to take place.

The Dark Arms were – are, probably – a group that destroyed their own dimension in order to attempt to conquer more than just what was available to them. And then they merged multiple dimensions together.

A Continuum Shift from me prevented those dimensions from collapsing in on each other, and as a result left the timelines of each dimension changed to a point. The Dark Arms can’t merge those dimensions back together, and since they don’t have a dimension to call their own –

Well, let’s just say that they’re not going to be able to reenact their plan anytime soon.

Anyway, with reset timelines comes reset memories, and my older brother Matthew, who’d been helping me at the time, had gotten caught up in it and lost his memories temporarily.

Thank Primus I’d been able to find him and help him recover those memories.

“And how do you know about him?” I asked Airam. I summoned a sphere of flames and threw it at her to stop her from lunging at me, and it was met with a purple explosion. “You can’t travel between dimensions like you used to – you don’t have access to those abilities like you used to.”

“So what? I still have my ways of knowing about what happened.” Airam grinned a little too widely at me.

“But you’ve forgotten things, too,” I pointed out. “Important things.”

I dodged a blast of purple flames as I reached behind me and pulled out the purple crystal that I’d been carrying with me since Thriller Bark.

The same purple crystal that had reminded me of a girl named Myra, who had helped me once.

Now I get to help her in turn.

“What do you think I’ve forgotten that’s important?” Airam replied in a mocking tone. She grinned at me, but the crazed expression didn’t quite meet her eyes.

And then she saw the crystal in my hand, and that grin faltered even more.

“You recognize this.” I held the crystal up. “I know you do. You had it when the two of us met during the World Collision, where time was thrown out of whack and let paradoxes happen. Like meeting your future and past self at the same time.”

Airam was staring at the crystal, that grin of hers completely gone. I could hear explosions going on outside of our clearing. The trees around us were burning from our flames; if this fight kept up for much longer, we were going to burn down the entire forest. And judging by the explosions, the others were going to be leaving similar marks all over the place, too.

“…D-does not comp-p-pute,” Airam said in a glitching monotone. She didn’t look away from the crystal, but the way she was acting, trying to pull away, hinted that something was trying to get her to avert her gaze and not look at the crystal.

Ah, programming trouble. Right, that. That was going to be a bit of an issue, but at least it was keeping her still.

I started to move towards Airam. “Myra. You were human once, but you were caught by terrible people and forced into the form of a Reploid after the World Collision – after the two of us _worked together_. I found you before I met you, but after you met me, on a version of Cybertron where the Autobots were enemies. They took control of you, but my cousin Joshua and I managed to stop them.”

Airam was backing up from me as I spoke. She bumped against a tree and didn’t move back any further.

“Somewhere between that point in time and the World Collision, you went from Myra, human-turned-Reploid, to Airam, my corrupted and reversed counterpart. We met again at the World Collision, and since then time has gone linear for the both of us.”

I could remember clearly how my counterpart had acted in all of these interactions.

**Memory Break**

_"How in the world am I supposed to be able to find my counterpart when this place is so big?" I muttered under my breath._

_"Counterpart? What's that?"_

_I felt a chill run down my spine when I heard the voice. It felt familiar, but unfamiliar at the exact same time. It was so weird, but..._

_I turned in order to face the direction that the voice had been coming from, and I paused when I saw the figure who was standing on the glass-covered, torn-up metal street behind me._

_The figure looked like a teenage girl, but everything normal stopped at the black hair that happened to be sticking out from from under a strange-looking helmet of hers. Everything else, though?_

_She looked like some odd-looking mishmash between Cybertronian and Reploid tech -- and I mean the tech of this particular dimension; she was wearing boxy armor that looked vaguely like mine and happened to be purple and white, but she had a helmet looked kind of like the MegaMan helmet, but there were antenna on either side of her head -- kind of like Optimus', I guess. And then there was a weird-looking visor that was keeping me from seeing her eyes, too._

_I blinked for a moment, then shook my head when I realized that the girl had asked me a question. "Oh! Uh...Basically, a twin, but they live on another world or alternate dimension."_

**Memory Break**

_"What are you doing in my mindscape? People shouldn't be able to get in here -- not after--" Myra paused, looking away as her entire body stiffened._

_Maria and Joshua looked at each other at Myra's reaction._

_Myra shook her head. "Who are you two? I didn't think anyone would be able to reach my true self. Everything that makes me who I am."_

_"My name's Maria, and this is Joshua." Maria nodded to Joshua, who looked a little unhappy at the introduction, but gave a nod. "We found you working for the Autobots by taking commands from them in German. You're not with them anymore, but we're trying to figure out what is going on in your head so that we can know what to fix. So that you can be free again."_

_Myra looked up at them sharply. "Fix me? Do you think that I'm a mach--" She cut herself off again with a choked noise._

_"A machine?" Joshua finished smoothly. "No. You're a person with a mechanical body. How you got to be that way, we don't particularly care about. What we care about is finding what Ratchet did to you and reversing the damage."_

_The name of Ratchet caused Myra's entire body to stiffen as the purple-green colors of her core started to whirl around at high speed. "You think you can fix what that madman did?! He turned me into a monster!"_

_Maria flinched back as Myra's form flickered, revealing her armor and the helmet._

_"I'm human!" she shrieked. "I'm not some robot!"_

**Memory Break**

_"It's good to see you here, and not elsewhere." She looked over at Myra then, and Myra couldn't help but feel nervous as she felt the World Jumper's eyes bore into her. "You must be Myra, then."_

_Myra looked at the World Jumper and swallowed a bit before nodding. "Th-that's right."_

_The World Jumper came closer to Myra, making the girl feel even more nervous as the other came to a stop a short distance in front of Myra. "I want to thank you. If it wasn't for you, I'm not sure what would have happened to me or to the others who have been forced to come together on this world."_

_Myra jumped a bit, startled at the World Jumper's statement. "U-uh, w-well...your welcome, I guess?"_

_The World Jumper blinked for a moment, before giving a small, almost unnoticeable smile._

**Memory Break**

_Myra came to a stop behind Seeker and Nightwing and looked up at the figure that was hovering above their heads and over the giant hole in the road. She had armor, like Flare-Up's, but it was various shades of purple instead of red, orange, and gray, and there was a mocking sneer on her face instead of the more serious expression that Flare-Up usually had._

_On top of that, she had black hair and purple eyes just like Myra._

_Myra swallowed. There was something about her that felt horribly wrong, and she didn't like it._

_The figure in purple threw back her head and let out another loud cackle. "This must be my lucky day! I didn't think that there were any more free people wandering around out here!" She grinned a little too widely for a normal human to grin. "The Dark Arms will be pleased."_

_Myra took a step back nervously as Seeker brought up his fists._

_"Who are you?" Seeker asked coldly. "Your aura feels wrong."_

_The grin on the teenage girl's face dropped. "Well, that's a rude way to say hello. Why don't you try that again?"_

_The girl suddenly covered herself from head to foot in purple flames, then thrust her arms forward and sent down twin flamethrowers._

_On instinct, Myra dashed forward and held up her hands, which sparked with purple embers of their own as Seeker and Nightwing quickly moved out of the way._

_"Myra –"_

_Seeker's yell of surprise was cut off on its own accord when the flames stopped at Myra's hands, then became thin tendrils that wound up her arms and faded out of view._

_Myra jolted when she felt that she was becoming more alert. The flames weren't hurting her, they were giving her more energy._

_The other girl's eyes widened at the sight and pulled back, stopping the stream of flames. "What is this?"_

_Myra dropped her arms as she absorbed the last of the purple flames and looked down at her hands in surprise. "Wh-what just – what just happened?"_

_"Who are you?" Seeker was glaring up at the figure in purple as Myra looked up at his demand._

_The girl recovered from her surprise quickly and sneered at the three standing below her. "I don't see why I should answer that, you little—"_

_A blast of orange-red flames suddenly shot out from between two collapsed buildings, and Flare-Up shot out a moment later, riding a board of metal that was painted in the same color scheme as her armor._

_The purple girl dropped below the flames, then rose up again and grinned widely at Flare-Up. "Ah, there you are. The masters are mad that you're ruining everything, you know."_

_Flare-Up activated her Buster and aimed it at the other armored girl. "What are you doing here."_

_"Looking for you. You don't realize how difficult it is to be able to keep tabs on the masters' most powerful weapon – the lower castes are having a lot of trouble keeping tabs on their little minions now that you've started cutting through their ranks. And they can't even find the source of the trouble in the Precursor Zone!" The purple girl winked. "I bet you know where I could find those little troublemakers, hmm?"_

_"I'm not telling you anything," Flare-Up replied flatly. "Especially after they created you, Airam."_

_Myra blinked in confusion. What kind of name was Airam?_

_Seeker sucked in a breath through his teeth._

_"Airam?" Nightwing muttered. "Hm. Creative."_

_"So you know about me." Airam's smile wavered a little. "That makes introductions a little bit easier, then." The smile dropped completely. "I'm taking you back in. And that one, too." She pointed down towards Myra, who looked up in alarm. "I came here because of another little runaway, but I think that catching you two will appease the masters quite nicely." The grin came back, more crazed. "But you don't want to come quietly, do you?"_

_Flare-Up didn't verbally respond. Instead, she leveled her Buster at Airam and fired a shot of energy as large as her upper body. It was at such close range that Airam had no time to dodge, and was sent flying back into a nearby building._

_A low rumble and a loud crash moments later heralded the entire building collapsing on top of the other armored girl._

_"You need to get away from here and my counterpart as quickly as you can!" Flare-Up called down to the others. "I'll keep her off your backs as best I can, but you have to keep moving forward!"_

**Memory Break**

_"I'd almost forgotten how quiet the streets were." Myra looked around at the abandoned buildings they passed, recognizing some as old hiding spots back when she had been alone. "It…it doesn't feel right now."_

_"Because you've been with us for long enough that you've forgotten a little what it's like to be alone," Flare-Up replied. She leaned forward on the hoverboard, and they started to move even more quickly through the streets towards the large, foreboding tower that stood over everything in the Dark City. She hissed under her breath. "Come on, come on, you purple clone, where are you?"_

_A loud screech came from one of the nearby skyscrapers, and a blast of purple flames came shooting out from one of the windows._

_"Myra!"_

_"Flash Fire!" Myra raised a hand, keeping the other one on Flare-Up's shoulder in order to keep her balance. The purple fire was pulled in her direction and absorbed by her form instantly, filling Myra with more energy than she felt she knew what to do with._

_"How dare you bring that one with you!" Airam shot down as the fire dissipated. The crazed look in her eyes caused Myra to flinch back a little._

_"I am just leveling the playing field." Flare-Up started to bring up her right hand, then winced and put that hand over her chest instead. Something white flashed. "Not yet! Not now!"_

_Myra's eyes widened sharply. She'd seen that flash once before – when Flare-Up had been explaining her plan. Did that mean…?_

_Airam hovered a few feet in front of them, looking startled. "No…how do you have that power?! The masters said it was never going to happen – they made sure of it!"_

_Flare-Up growled as the white flash faded. "They only want you to think that." She held out both hands, palms facing the dark gray sky. "Airam. I know what you are, and who you are. I know what you have become, and what you intend to do with the powers that were granted to you in the beginning."_

_Airam's brow furrowed in confusion, the expression mimicked by Myra._

_"Flare-Up, what are you—"_

_"Scribe told me." Flare-Up cut Myra off. "And now I am simply going to follow through." She took in a breath, then started murmuring something that didn't sound anything like English._

_The white glow started up again, but it quickly changed to a dark, dark blue as tendrils of light rose from the palms of Flare-Up's hands and reached out towards Airam._

_Airam started backing up slowly, then turned and prepared to bolt, only for the tendrils to latch onto her arms suddenly and pull her back, circling up her arms. Myra lost sight of the tips under Airam's hair._

_Airam came to an abrupt halt, arched her back, and screamed to the heavens as something in the tendrils of light pulsed back towards Flare-Up._

_Flare-Up cut the tendrils off, letting them dissipate and take the whatever-was-pulsing thing in them along with it._

_Then she raised her Buster and fired a blast of orange energy that was as big as her head, sending Airam flying into another building._

_Flare-Up lowered her Buster and almost fell forward, but managed to regain her balance. "Right. That's taken care of."_

_"Wh-what did you do?!" Myra yelped. "Where did those light-things come from?!"_

_"Instinct," Flare-Up murmured in reply. She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. It probably won't happen again."_

_"Probably?! Flare-Up, what did you do?!"_

_Flare-Up half-turned and glared back at Myra with such a fierce gaze that it caused Myra to flinch back. "I took her ability to World Jump, okay?!"_

_Myra's eyes widened sharply. "Wha—"_

_"Impossible!" Ariam stumbled out from the crater she'd made in the side of a building. "You can't do that – that's an ability that can't be taken from—"_

_"Well, I just did, and I don't know how I know," Flare-Up replied shortly. She pointed the Buster at Airam again. "We need to get inside the tower. Now."_

**Memory Break – Maria’s POV**

I stood in front of Airam, who had her back to the tree and looked like she wanted to scramble around it and disappear into the woods. Her expression kept switching from blank to crazed grin to terrified to some unreadable expression that was a mix of two of the three.

“Myra.” I held out the purple crystal. It was pulsing softly in time with a heartbeat, but not mine. “I’ve got your missing piece. Take it.”

**Change in POV**

“Luffy, stop!”

Hiken leapt between Zoro and Luffy as the mind-controlled rubber man sent a fist careening towards his swordsman. Hiken stood between the two of them, arms held out at his sides and the X-scar exposed.

Luffy _would_ have punched Hiken in the center of the scar right then and there were it not for the fact that his fist stopped short suddenly. His entire arm was trembling, as though at war with itself – punch Hiken, or don’t.

Nami took advantage of this particular distraction and hit Luffy in the back with a Thunderbolt Tempo, causing him to collapse.

“This MindTech is dangerous,” Nami commented as Luffy’s arm retracted. “But how did you know he wasn’t going to punch you when we kicked around each other?”

“I’m his brother,” Hiken replied. “Or, someone who looks like the brother he knew. He loves me too much to hurt me just because someone else told him to.” He looked down at Luffy as he started to stir. He started backing away. “I don’t know what he’s going to do—“

“You’re staying here,” Zoro said pointedly, reaching out to grab Hiken’s arm. “Luffy’s—“

A loud scream rent the air suddenly, causing the group to turn their heads sharply in the direction of the sound.

“That sounded like Maria!” Sanji exclaimed in alarm. He burst into a run.

“Sanji—“ Nami cursed as he disappeared into the trees. “If we split up, we could end up getting caught again!”

Hiken took off after Sanji, slipping out of Zoro’s grip with a flash of flames that caused the swordsman to curse.

“Hey!” Zoro barked.

Luffy groaned and started to get to his feet, rubbing the back of his neck. “What the hell?”

“Luffy!” Chopper grabbed him in a hug, wailing loudly. “I’m glad you’re okay!”

“Chopper?” Luffy scowled and squirmed out of the hug. “What happened? Where’d the fun music go?”

“It was a trap,” Zoro replied. “And the cook just ran back into the woods we got trapped in _before._ Idiot.”

“He heard a scream that sounded like Maria’s,” Nami said, frowning. “But she’s fighting a bad version of herself, too, so it could have been her who had screamed.”

“Hm.” Luffy put a hand on top of his hat, frowning. “Let’s go check it out. If Maria’s fighting someone, then we should stay out of it unless she asks for help. Where is—“

“That way, Luffy.” Robin pointed in the direction the scream had come from. “There was quite a fire show happening over there a few minutes ago.”

“Right.” Luffy turned, then took off into the woods.

Nami groaned and put her head in her hands. “What is it with everyone splitting up?”

“I think the threat we’re worrying about has been taken care of,” Robin commented knowingly as Zoro took off after Luffy. “We had better not be left behind.”

Nami sighed. “Right, right.”


	6. Multiversal Explanations

**Maria’s POV**

When Airam took the crystal from me, I wasn’t sure what exactly was going to happen next.

So I’d ended up getting thrown back across the clearing when Airam released a shockwave of purple fire as she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Guh!” I slammed into a tree back-first and stumbled as I attempted to regain my balance. Across the clearing, Airam was leaning back against her tree, which was burning from purple fire as she gripped the crystal so tightly I thought it was going to crack and break from the pressure.

Whatever was going on, it was _painful_ to Airam – to Myra. A part of me wasn’t surprised; recovering memories wasn’t exactly easy.

But something else had been done to her, too. Probably extra layers of programming that she had to tear through in order to restore what she’d lost – or what someone else had deleted.

It made me wonder what had happened to Myra after the two encounters that I’d had with her – World Collision and reverse Cybertron, back when I was younger and more inexperienced.

Back before my parents were murdered.

I moved across the clearing as Myra started to bend over double, gritting her teeth in pain as she curled in on herself. I got to her as she fully collapsed to the floor.

“Maria-san! Are you all right?!”

I turned my head sharply as Sanji burst through the trees, Hiken right behind him with a worried expression.

“I heard your screaming,” Sanji added.

I frowned. “I didn’t—Oh, right.” I motioned to the form of my counterpart, curled up on the ground in front of me. “The one you heard screaming was my counterpart – another version of me. The one I’ve been looking for ever since Thriller Bark _and_ the same one who’s been causing me trouble ever since I got here and lost my memory.”

Sanji looked between my counterpart and I as she trembled on the ground. “Wh—“

“What did you do?” Hiken asked.

“Gave her back something she lost.” I shrugged. “It’s burning through the programming that isn’t supposed to be there – that’s why you heard the scream. It’s causing her pain.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Sanji knelt next to my counterpart.

“I don’t think so. This is something that Myra has to work through on her own – at least, for the moment.” I moved away from her.

“Wait – programming?” Sanji looked over at me. “Then she’s like you that way, too?”

I nodded as Hiken went over and leaned against a tree on the other side of the clearing. “Yeah. Myra – Airam – is like me that way. The only difference is how that happened. The people who transformed her weren’t exactly…benevolent.”

Sanji’s expression hardened instantly. “Where are they? I’ll murder them for—“

“I’ve already taken care of them, Sanji. They aren’t going to be causing us any more trouble, believe me.”

I guess I sounded irritated enough that Sanji shut up.

Then there came the sound of something moving in the trees, and Hiken quickly moved around to hide behind the one he had been leaning against as Luffy and the others came barreling out of the trees and into the clearing.

Luffy locked his gaze with mine. “You take care of it?”

“As much as I can, Captain.” I nodded over to Myra, who had stopped trembling like a leaf. “It’s all up to her and what’s in her head, now. I intend to stick near her just in case things don’t turn out as I’m hoping.”

“You mind explaining what the hell just happened while you’re waiting?” Nami demanded shortly. “I wasn’t expecting to get dragged out of bed by some strangely familiar melody.”

“It seemed to be calling out to our very souls,” Robin agreed. Her tone of voice made it sound like she was trying to use her usual grim humor, but the look on her face said that she was shaken just as much as the rest of them.

I sighed and nodded. “Better sit down or find a tree to lean against; this one’s gonna take a while.”

I sat down in the middle of the clearing, near Myra, as the others either sat on the grass around me or took to leaning against trees nearby.

Luffy leaned against the tree that Hiken was hiding behind. I don’t know if that was intentional or not.

“Captain, if you don’t want to hear this, that’s fine,” I added. “But if you want an explanation behind what just happened, I would suggest you do listen.”

Luffy didn’t give me a verbal response as I turned and looked at the others.

“What I said back on Fishman Island plays into this,” I said. “Like I said back then, I’m a World Jumper – I can travel to different worlds, and see different kinds of places and people that others only dream about. And…apparently, have nightmares about as well.”

I glanced away from them as the others looked at each other.

“You mean that tech stuff is something you’ve run into before,” Franky said. “Did you meet Vegapunk before or—“

“It didn’t originate with him.” I shook my head. “It…it started somewhere else, a long time ago.” I sighed, then leaned back, looking up at the stars above us. “Well, it feels like a long time ago for me, but it’s more like 22 years ago by my home dimension’s time. That’s when I got involved, at least.”

“Involved in what?” Chopper spoke up.

I looked back at the crew. “There was this…group, in another dimension, who were greedy for power and domination. They’d conquered their entire dimension, but they wanted more than the galaxies of stars and planets they’d taken over – they wanted more dimensions. But when they tried to break through the dimensional barrier into another dimension, all they did was destroy their own.”

“Morons,” Sanji muttered.

“Genius morons,” I corrected. “They survived their dimension’s destruction – them and a few other refugees who scattered themselves across the multiverse in an effort to hide and warn others about what had happened. The story didn’t reach me until I was in the middle of undoing what those monsters had done.”

My expression hardened. “Which leads me to what the Dark Arms actually _did,_ starting with the day they murdered my parents.”

My crewmates hadn’t been expecting that – except for Luffy. I could hear him moving slightly against the tree behind me.

“The Dark Arms wanted me because of my ability to traverse dimensions without any problems,” I explained. “I don’t create rifts in time and space that could collapse your dimension as you know it, but at the time I’d only been traveling for two years. Because I didn’t hide what I was or the dimension I called home, they were able to track me to my home dimension and set up an ambush of sorts. I arrived home from a journey just as they were preparing to interrogate my parents in order to figure out where they had gone.”

My hands clenched at the grass below me as I looked down at the ground. “They murdered them right in front of me, and in the bout of rage that followed, they caught me with the MindTech that you were all caught with tonight.”

There was a moment of silence, but then –

“You said that you were immune to it,” Zoro spoke up. “How did that happen?”

I smirked and looked up at him, but the expression was dry. “That is because of a few events that happened after that. They….” My smirk faded, and I looked away as the memories settled in my mind again. “They used me to merge a number of dimensions together – some I knew because of my travels, but some I only barely recognized. My older brother, Matthew, was on one of the worlds that ended up getting involved.”

“Brother?” Nami repeated.

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got Matthew, and then Liz and Collin as my younger siblings. Joshua and Khrista are cousins of mine, too, but they weren’t involved in the World Collision, as it came to be called. Anyway, Matthew ended up getting their attention somehow, and they sent me after him in order to…to make sure he wasn’t a problem to them anymore. But I couldn’t finish him – something in what’s going on up here—“ I motioned to my head. “—and down here—“ I motioned to my chest. “Kept their order from being able to follow through. As a result of that, I was not only able to break free of their control, but gain an immunity to their technology.”

The feeling of confidence I had in telling them that faded when I remembered what had followed.

“But…I had to give my brother time to get away from them – he didn’t have an immunity like I did then. So I served as a distraction and…ended up caught again. The Dark Arms didn’t waste any time trying to figure out how I worked, and in the end they sealed me away. Then Myra found me.”

Robin blinked. “Myra?”

I motioned to the curled-up form next to me. “Myra’s story is…complicated. As far as I can tell, our timelines cross at different points with no rhyme or reason. She met my sister Liz on Myra’s home world first, and after that started World Jumping herself. She ended up in the World Collision event, and helped to not only find and give me repairs, but take back the people who had been taken by the Dark Arms and stop them. In the end, something acted through me to separate the dimensions I’d been forced to merge together.”

I moved a hand over my chest, remembering the pulsing white glow that had made itself known, and the pressure I’d felt from the power wanting to be released. “It’s called a Continuum Shift. I basically hit a reset button that not only fixed that part of the multiverse, but also reset the worlds themselves. It would be basically like you all fell asleep and woke up where you were at the start of this journey Luffy set out on, but then different events could end up happening as a result.”

“You’d better not do that here,” Luffy said seriously.

“I have no reason to,” I replied. “This dimension isn’t in danger of something beyond it doing something to it, or some major event happening that could turn your entire journey on its head.”

“Good.” Luffy relaxed against the tree.

“But what about the rest of Myra’s story?” Nami pressed. “Why did you call her Airam last time you talked about her?”

I sighed. “That’s where her timeline gets…tricky. After the World Collision – which separated the two of us – Myra went on a series of adventures of her own that led her to run into me again – _before_ the World Collision.”

Zoro snorted. “How the hell’s that possible?”

“Dimensions are tricky – some have time go at faster paces than others, and they don’t exactly line up with the other dimensions around them. I can spend a year in one dimension and have that be a day in another, or be gone for an undetermined amount of time only to come home and find out I was only gone for 20 years.”

I huffed. “After the World Collision, I’ve decided to stop thinking about it. But that doesn’t change the fact that Myra met me _after_ she had gone through the World Collision and _before_ I had. At that point, she’d been changed into a Reploid like I am, but the people who did that to her were sick and twisted. They wanted a labor force they could order around easily; my cousin Joshua and I ended up taking that away from them. But we didn’t get much time to sit and talk with Myra – she ended up disappearing for another dimension not long after a huge event was resolved in that particular dimension.”

My expression darkened. “And then I met Airam during the World Collision.”

“So Myra and Airam are the same person, yet they broke time and space by being in the same place?” Robin inclined her head in thought. “Being a World Jumper must make for an interesting life.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” I said dryly.

“So, what made Airam-san different from Myra-chan?” Sanji looked Myra over again. It didn’t look like she was moving anytime soon.

“Airam is a twisted version of me who likes following orders and seeing me squirm,” I replied. “Because she wasn’t upholding some secret World Jumper code that I don’t know about, instinct led me to take her World Jumping abilities away from her. After the World Collision, she was probably wandering the pathways between dimensions until I ran into her again, when she pushed me into this dimension without allowing me much time to create a portal—“

“And causing you to lose your memories as a result!” Chopper exclaimed.

I nodded. “Exactly. She’s been hounding me ever since. I didn’t make the connection between Myra and Airam until I ran into a group of pirates without a captain over the course of my two years’ training. They called themselves the Purple Pirates, and…they are Myra’s crew from _another_ Grand Line.”

That got me a number of blank stares.

“Another Grand Line?” Franky repeated. “You mean…another dimension where there’s a Grand Line? Like this one?”

“That sounds hard to believe,” Usopp commented. He rubbed his chin in thought. “But…kind of not at the same time. I mean, you proved that Pokémon exist down at Fishman Island, and you have powers but you don’t have a Devil Fruit, either. And then there’s all this.” He motioned to Myra’s still form. “So…maybe it’s not all _that_ farfetched?”

I nodded.

“So, if they’re from another Grand Line, does that mean they know about us?” Brook asked. “About our other selves?”

I opened my mouth to answer when another voice spoke up.

“The Purple Pirates didn’t really cross paths with Lu’s crew, from what I remember. At least, not until I got captured and everybody converged on Marineford at once.”

The others’ gazes moved sharply; I turned my head much more slowly and looked over at Hiken as he emerged from the trees next to Luffy.

The look on Luffy’s face made my core feel like it was breaking in two.

I nodded. “Max told me some of what happened. The World Government found out about Myra’s Reploid Form and kidnapped her before having Vegapunk turn her into a prototype Pacifista, but something went wrong when Blackbeard got the Dark Arms’ attention, right?”

Hiken nodded. “Yeah.” His expression hardened. “I’m mad that they took your parents right out from under you, but they took my whole world from me that day for their World Collision. I was thrown out of there from the impact; I didn’t think that anyone else made it out until you told me the Purple Pirates were okay.” His gaze moved over to Myra.

Luffy was making noises like he wanted to say something, but the shocked expression on his face clearly said he was having a hard time processing the fact that Hiken was standing in front of him, with _his_ scar on his chest.

“I was hiding around in the Hyrule section of the World Collision,” Hiken added. “So you never saw me.”

I shook my head, then paused. “That’s where Myra was when it started – you may have been in different—“

“Where’s….”

I cut myself off when I heard Luffy’s question, and I looked between him and Hiken as Luffy fixed his gaze on his dead brother’s double.

Luffy visibly swallowed. “Where’s your brother?”

Hiken’s expression became more somber. “He and his crew went after Blackbeard. Akainu was about to hit me and…” He trailed off and looked away.

I looked away from the two of them as well, then pulled my knees up to my chest.

Hiken hadn’t just lost his brother. He’d lost his entire _world._ Everyone he knew apart from Myra and the Purple Pirates were just – gone.

And it had been my fault for not stopping the Dark Arms sooner, for not seeing what they were up to sooner.

I buried my face in my knees as Luffy let out a loud cry. _“ACE!”_

I could only assume that he’d leapt at Hiken for a hug.

And me?

Tears had started leaking out of my eyes before Luffy had yelled his brother’s name. Remembering everything that had happened – my parents’ death, what the Dark Arms had used me for, what I’d had to do in order to undo _everything—_

It was almost too much, feeling those tears make the knees of my jeans wet.

I felt a hand press against my back, making soft circles, but I didn’t sense a presence behind them – Robin, no doubt.

It helped to ground me, at least a little – I was in the present; there wasn’t anything I could personally do about my past.

I lifted my head and looked over at Robin, who relaxed her hands and let the hand on my back dissipate as Luffy’s cries quieted down.

“So, what about the music?” Zoro asked bluntly.

Nami smacked him upside the head. “Give her a moment to recover, you idiot!”

“I can answer that.”

I stiffened at the voice, then turned my head sharply to look over at the one who had spoken.

Myra was pushing herself up into a sitting position, slowly, on shaky arms. She leaned back against the tree and let go of something.

It was the crystal I’d been carrying since Thriller Bark. But it wasn’t purple anymore – it was blacker than the night sky above us, and almost seemed to suck in what little light we had.

Sanji reached for it, but Myra stuck an armored foot in his path.

“Don’t touch that!” Myra yelped. “It’ll corrupt you if you do!”

Sanji pulled his hand back sharply. “What about you, Myra-chan? You’ll end up—“

“It’s a corruption from in me, I’ve got the parameters to keep it out now,” Myra replied seriously. “And I’m planning on destroying it first chance I get.”

“Wow, she really _is_ another version of Maria,” Nami commented to Robin.

Robin merely chuckled.

Myra blinked, then looked over at me. Her purple eyes widened sharply. “M-Maria? So, it really is you?”

I raised a hand and waved. “Yeah, it’s me. Good to see that you’re back to your old self again.” I smiled a little, but it didn’t have much strength. “So, you want to tell them about themes or should I?”

Myra stared at me with a befuddled expression for a moment, then shook her head. “No, no, I can – I can take care of it. I…was kinda the one who got them in this trouble in the first place, before I was back to normal. Thanks for getting that missing piece back, by the way. I…wasn’t myself without it.”

I reached over and patted one of her purple boots. “I know what that’s like. I’m glad that I was able to get to you before you did something stupid.”

Myra laughed weakly in response, then looked over at the others. “The music you heard is…well, it’s a universal constant. People call them ‘themes.’”

“Themes?” Robin repeated.

“You mean like, _theme songs?”_ Usopp gasped; I could see the stars forming in his eyes.

Myra nodded. “Y-yeah. Everyone’s got at least one song that resonates with them somehow, and when played under the right kind of context, it calls out to your soul and you respond. That’s, um…” She rubbed the back of her head, looking nervous. “That’s probably why I used them to lure you guys out. I was counting on you guys not knowing your themes and not knowing how to resist hearing them, so I used them to get you out in the open. I don’t know Flare-Up – err, Maria’s, though, so I guess that’s a good thing.” She looked over at me.

“I know at least one of mine,” I commented. “So I don’t think that you would have been able to pull me out all that easily.”

“Eh heh. Yeah, I kinda thought so.” Myra rubbed the back of her head again. “You did have that feeling like you knew your theme already when I met you.”

I smiled a little at that.

“So, what now?”

Myra and I looked over at Nami when she spoke.

“I mean, you’ve lost your dimension, and you’ve found your…other self?” Nami blinked a couple times, then shook her head. “Regardless, you guys have to know what you’re going to do next, right?”

“I want Ace to join our crew!” Luffy yelled.

“Lu!” Hiken yelped. He chuckled. “I can’t do that, you know that. If the world saw me, they’d say that Ace is back from the dead when I’m just replacing him.”

“Still!”

“No, no. I’ll pop by and keep an eye on you, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline your offer, little brother.” Hiken ruffled Luffy’s hair affectionately.

“Speaking of which!” I looked at Myra. “Your crew is waiting for you on Memory Isle on the Calm Belt. All the Purple Pirates are there and accounted for – except for their captain.” I gave her a pointed look.

Myra’s eyes widened sharply. “You…you mean it? They really are all okay? They got out of that alive?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And they’re waiting for you to come back.” I smiled and tilted my head to one side. “So go and make sure Max knows you’re okay before she has an aneurysm over Isaac and Ike, eh?”

Myra laughed weakly. “Yeah, that definitely sounds like something they’d do. I’ll make sure to bring them in line if they’re doing anything crazy.”

“Good, because when I left I think—“

The universe decided right then and there to cut me off.

Because the clearing was suddenly awash with bright, electric blue light as circular, flat disk of the same-colored energy opened up on another end of the clearing, and a figure stepped out.

I barely saw that the figure was a teenage boy with armor like mine before he turned his head to look over at me.

“There you are,” he said. “It’s about time you finished up here; we’ve got other things to worry about.”

I spluttered a bit at the voice. “Joshua, you could have called me instead of coming to get me!”


	7. Wrapping Things Up

The sight of the portal had been enough to get the Straw Hats up on their feet, but at Maria’s exclamation they stopped short.

“Joshua?” Chopper repeated.

“You mean this guy’s your cousin?” Usopp asked.

Maria pushed herself up to her feet from where she’d been sitting and nodded as the Straw Hats relaxed reluctantly.

Joshua – a teenage boy in blue and green armor with electric indigo eyes – walked across the clearing and stood next to Maria. “I thought it would be better if I came and got you in person. Maria, you can’t stay here any longer than you already have, you’re going to turn the plot on its head and then _you’re_ going to be the problem World Jumpers get sent in to fix. You have to come home.”

“She’s not a problem!” Luffy jumped in front of Joshua, looking like he was about to punch him. “She’s a part of my crew!”

“Luffy, it’s okay.”

Luffy looked back at Maria sharply. “Maria—“

“I know.” Maria raised her hands in a placating sort of gesture. “I’m a part of your crew, and I’m not causing you any trouble, but as much as I hate to admit it, Joshua’s right. World Jumpers aren’t supposed to stay in worlds and become as close to the storyline as I have. We end up causing trouble in our own ways as a result. I mean, if I’d followed you up to Neptune’s castle on Fishman Island, I’m pretty sure that getting me involved up there would have not only thrown Hody’s plans out of whack, but would have also left Fishman Island in the same state or a similar state to how things were before we got there. And I don’t think you would have been able to throw that challenge at Big Mom, either.”

Joshua looked at Maria with an odd expression at her words, like he was trying to figure something about her out.

“I-isn’t that a good thing though?” Usopp spoke up.

“Depends on how you look at it,” Maria replied dryly.

“Which is why I don’t think me joining the crew would be a good idea, either,” Hiken spoke up. “If the Marines get wind of a second Ace running around, it’s going to get you a lot more attention from them than you should be getting.”

Usopp paled suddenly at the implications.

“And you’re only gonna get more attention if I’m around, too,” Maria added. “Especially when the _rest_ of the Marines figure out that I’m a World Jumper. Garp and Sengoku both know, but they’re retired and said they’d keep quiet on the matter, but if something else comes up….”

“Y-you gotta go home!” Usopp yelped. “Luffy, please! I don’t wanna run into more Marines than we already have! The New World might be bad enough without them!”

“It will be,” Joshua said cryptically, which only cause Usopp to squeal even louder.

_“Luffy!”_

“It might be for the best, Luffy,” Robin said gently. “Maria was going to have to disappear at some point. She has other duties to attend to, on top of being a member of our crew.”

Luffy frowned at that, not looking like he liked the idea very much. He turned and looked at Maria with a determined expression. “You’ll come back?”

“First sign of trouble that means that I can, yes.” Maria nodded. “Just…don’t cause any on purpose, Luffy? Please? I don’t think I’d be able to come then if you did that.”

Usopp made similar sounds of begging, quickly joined by Chopper.

Luffy looked somewhat annoyed at that.

“Would it be better if you had her number?”

The Straw Hats, Hiken, and Joshua looked over at Myra, who ducked her head at the stares she was getting.

“I mean, if you could contact her when you think you’re having trouble, she might be able to check that way to see if you guys need her or not,” Myra added quickly.

“That’s not a bad idea, actually,” Nami commented. “Maria, you _do_ have a way to contact us, right?”

“Well, we’ve got the Snail Phone in the kitchen, don’t we?” Maria smirked. “You guys can call me with that and I’ll be able to pick up no problem.” She pulled out a small notebook and pen and wrote out a number before handing the sheet over to Nami. “Here, you’ll be able to get me with that when I’m anywhere in the multiverse. If anything big comes up that you think I might be able to help in, make sure to give me a call – or I’ll call the ship’s phone if I think something’s coming up on my end. Sound good?”

“I guess this is the best option we’re going to have for this.” Nami took Maria’s number and looked it over before showing it to Robin, who gave it an interested look.

“You make sure you come back.”

Maria looked over at Luffy, who was looking at her with a determined expression. After a moment, she gave a thumbs-up and nodded. “You can count on me coming back, Captain, but only if you guys really really need me. I don’t want to make your journey to One Piece _too_ easy.”

Luffy grinned as Usopp whimpered. “Good.”

“When you come back, make sure to fill me in on what sorts of worlds you have been to,” Robin said. “I would like to hear more about the places that you are able to visit.”

“Of course!”

“Bring me back riches!” Nami declared.

“Uh…” Maria chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of her head. “I’d rather not disrupt a dimension’s economy just for that.”

“Bring me back booze,” Zoro said flatly. He smirked. “And maybe we can spar when you get back.”

“You harm one hair on her head and you’re dead moss head!” Sanji snapped.

Maria laughed. “I’m really gonna miss you guys.”

Chopper lunged forward and grabbed Maria’s leg in a hug. “I’m gonna miss you too!” He looked up at her, teary-eyed. “Make sure you stay safe, okay?”

“I will.”

Joshua rolled his eyes; Maria ignored him.

“Yohohohoho! Make sure that you come back with all sorts of new music for me to explore, hmm? I would love to hear what other dimensions are capable of!”

“And bring back plans for new inventions!” Franky added. “I’d like to see what these other dimensions are up to, if they can come up with a _super_ design for your body!”

Maria chuckled and rubbed the back of her head at Brook’s and Franky’s requests. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Myra clapped a hand on Maria’s shoulder. “Keep an eye out? I don’t think the Dark Arms are going to lie down and play dead just because you managed to put a stop to them the first time.”

Maria’s expression became serious at the request; she nodded. “I don’t intend to let them sneak up on us again, count on that.”

Myra nodded, then pulled back and looked over at Hiken. “You want to hang out with us for a while? That Memory Isle my crew’s on might be a pretty good place to hide.”

Hiken shrugged, smirking. “I don’t see why not. It’ll give me an excuse as to why I’m around, at least.”

Joshua put a hand on Maria’s shoulder. “It’s time to go.”

Maria looked over at her cousin, and her expression became a little more somber. She nodded. “Yeah, we…we’ve gotta go.” She looked over at the rest of the crew – some of whom were getting quite teary-eyed and trying to hide it. “I’ll be back, guys. It may take a bit, but if there’s anything that comes up that you think shouldn’t be, let me know.”

Most of the others nodded – except for Luffy, who simply looked at her with a serious expression.

Maria gave a small smile. “See you guys later.”

She looked over at Joshua and nodded again, and Joshua stepped aside and motioned to the portal.

Maria took in a breath, then breathed out slowly as she looked at the glowing, bright blue circle of energy that stood in front of her.

“Okay. Time to go home.”

With that, Maria stepped through the portal, disappearing from sight.

Joshua looked around at the group standing in the clearing, then fixed his eyes on Luffy. “I hope you’re ready for what the New World’s going to throw at you. It will be even more difficult than what you’ve faced so far.”

“We’re ready,” Luffy replied seriously, nodding.

Joshua nodded in return, then turned and stepped through the portal. It swirled shut behind him like water going down a drain, leaving the clearing in near-darkness, except for the stars above.

Myra looked up at the sky, smiling a little. “Maria’ll be okay. She’s a hero across multiple dimensions.”

“She is?” Luffy blinked in surprise.

Hiken chuckled. “Hero is putting it a bit mildly, I think.”

“Yeah, well, there are still a lot of people who have bounties out on her head, so things sort-of even out a little.” Myra sent the two of them a knowing smirk, then looked over at Hiken specifically. “You ready to head out?”

“No!” Luffy clung to Hiken instantly. “Stay tonight!”

“Luffy’s right; it’s too late to go traveling,” Nami agreed. “Spend the night on _Sunny,_ and you can head for that island tomorrow morning.”

Myra hesitated, but Hiken laughed.

“All right, all right. And you can fill me in on what exactly happened down in Fishman Island.” Hiken grinned. “Must’ve been some adventure, right?”

“Yeah!” Luffy started bounding back towards the ship, dragging Hiken behind him as he started to talk about Camie and sea monsters and Jimbei.

Myra smiled a little as the two of them disappeared, then blinked in surprise when Sanji appeared in front of her and held out his hand.

“Myra-chan, if you would accompany me to the _Sunny,_ I will prepare for you a meal that you have never tasted before,” Sanji said.

Myra blinked as Nami rolled her eyes as Robin chuckled. “Uh…okay?” She took Sanji’s hand – which caused him to nearly melt into a puddle – before he refocused and started to lead Myra back towards the ship herself.

The others started to follow.

“So, what’s it like, finding another version of yourself?” Chopper asked.

Myra looked down at him with a somewhat surprised expression, before looking down at the black crystal that she held in her other hand.

The thing that she was going to have to destroy if she was going to be able to find any peace.

“It’s…interesting.” Myra looked up at the sky, thinking of the worlds beyond and where Maria might be now. “And _really_ fun. It’s like finding the other half that you didn’t realize you were missing.”

“That sounds so cool.”

Myra chuckled to herself, and nodded. “Yeah. It really is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sighs; wipes brow from relief* Whoo! That took two years to write and over 500,000 words and I am glad to be done with it! Maria has officially moved on from the One Piece realm and is now moving on to other adventures in other dimensions!
> 
> I'm going to take a break from posting and slow down in my writing for a little while. I do have the next story started, but I'd like to get more of it written before I start posting once-a-week again on that. Well, at least once a week. My next story will probably be up in...late January or early February, I think.
> 
> It's going to be called "Smoking Gun." Let's see if any of you know what fandom that's from!
> 
> See ya around!


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